William Hicks

As we lament the launching of the last U.S. space shuttle mission, we should pause for a moment and reflect on what it really means. Ironically, the first moon landing happened one year before America reached its domestic peak in oil production, which likely better explains more than any other single factor why the space program failed to advance after Apollo program wrapped up.

There has been a lot of commentary within the peak oil movement as of late noting that the concept seems to be creeping ever closer to mainstream acceptance. While we should be heartened that the logic of our arguments is finally beginning to shine through the fog of denial and obfuscation, we also need to remind ourselves that we still have a long way to go before any major political leader will be willing to come out and flatly acknowledge the truth. So how will we know when that happens? I suspect it will be when we hear this phrase uttered in connection with peak oil: “Nobody could have predicted…”

Immediately after 9/11, Washington Post columnist and premier Inside-the-Beltway pundit George Will asserted that America had taken a “Holiday from History” during the previous ten years and that the attacks had brought it to an abrupt end. In reality, by ignoring energy issues Americans took their holiday from history for a much long period, from 1981-2005, and we’re about to pay a very steep price for it.

In 1978, an analyst for the Rand Corporation produced a report for the CIA predicting how long oil supplies would last–and got it exactly right.

The story of the presidential campaign of former U.S. Representative John B. Anderson is so at odds with anything we see going on in politics today that it almost seems like it happened in a whole other country if not to say on a completely different planet.